


The loneliest dogs howl in the night

by captainhurricane



Series: Where There's a Will, There's a Wake [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, Ghosts, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 14:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5970634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joseph Kavinsky refuses to vanish. His pack remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The loneliest dogs howl in the night

The boys of Henrietta are all animals. It's often said in a jest, as a brotherly insult between the boys themselves. Nobody ever means it as a compliment. Humans may be animals but at least mankind is at the top of the foodchain. These boys aren't- not even the raven boys, the rich bastards of Aglionby, both scorned and loved. Not the boys who fall into cracks and never reach the status of a raven. The snakes, the wolves- the rapid dogs that prowl the streets when it's dark, neon glow gleaming against shining cars, the motors howling, shrieking in the night.

 

If the boys in their cars are dogs, then surely, most certainly Kavinsky was one as well. The alpha, the beginning and the end of many of these cracked, splintered, broken boys. Kavinsky was the most animal of them all, a self-destructive chaos contained between gritted teeth and stolen dreams. It's no wonder the dreams took him.

 

They could not make the hurricane that was Joseph Kavinsky vanish entirely.

 

”Dude.” Skov spends a lot of time lounging in backseats of cars. He never takes off his cap, never goes on in his day without a cigarette hanging off his mouth. Skov is a piece of shit like they all are, a boy fallen into the cracks, a ghost already but not dead. Skov deals with it. Skov lives with it.

 

”Dude.” Swan toys with his bird-earring, his eyes squeezed closed. They usually are. The world is easier to take like it. Their world of the night, of neon lights and the smell of asphalt. He pokes Skov again.

 

Jiang sits on the driver's seat but doesn't drive. Their car, Jiang's car is out of place on the edge of the burned crater, the skeletal white Mitsubishi only a few feet away but if any of these boys are concerned, it could just as well be a world away.

”He's out of it, leave it,” Jiang mumbles and takes another drag of his joint, the sweet smoke mixing with the crisp night air. He's leaning out of the window.

”Who the fuck falls asleep in the middle of a story,” Swan kicks Jiang's seat, lets out a hoarse cackle when Jiang chokes.

 

There is an elephant in the car but they don't acknowledge it. There is a dragon and a boy on the back of their minds but they don't speak about it. The day had seen these three on Prokopenko's bedside, watching the steady rise and fall of Proko's chest. Not quite able to understand but still. Almost there. Proko had broken an arm when his car had crashed the night Kavinsky-

crashed

and

burned

they had never talked about it, why Kavinsky had done the things he did. Why he had been the way he is. They had just accepted it, lived with it. Kavinsky had given them a sense of existing, a purpose to breathe the same air, to laugh when Kavinsky laughed.

 

”Skov does,” Jiang reaches behind and tosses his bag of weed at Swan's head. Swan sticks out his tongue, the small stud in the middle gleaming. The car stinks.

”I saw him,” comes Skov's voice then, dreamy, sleepy. His hand is twitching, a string of saliva on the corner of his mouth. He's stretched uncomfortably on the backseat, feet partly on Swan's lap no matter how much Swan tries to push them off. Skov takes another swig of his lukewarm beer and groans, loud, burps. Not a raven, no. Only the richest of boys, most priviledged of boys get such wings.

”What?” Jiang leans to watch. Swan toys with his lip ring and rolls his eyes.

”He's talking shit.”

 

”K.” One letter. Skov spills beer on the backseat, smiles all droopy and high when Jiang lets out a strangled sound. The car is his baby. The cars understand these kids better than anything, anyone.

”What the fuck do you mean you saw him? He's-”

”dead.” Skov interrupts Swan again. Skov's twitching, long fingers have reached for the window. His smile is unnaturally stretched.

”Didn't you see him? Nothing stays dead in this town. He's still here. Don't you, ah shit, gotta take a leak-” Skov stumbles out of the car, makes his way away from the graveyard of Mitsubishis, from their car and whistles as he does his deed.

 

”The fuck?” Swan coughs, not really comprehending.

 

He does comprehend, really. Kavinsky had seemed infinite, endless. The beginning and the end. The space between birth and death, no matter how much they had seen the dragon eat him alive.

He does comprehend. Kavinsky is infinite, endless. The Mitsubishis remain, unoperable, dead, empty extensions of the dragon that was K, their leader, their everything.

 

”I thought it was a hallucination. Wouldn't be the first time,” mumbles Jiang, his words barely audible. He's leaning against the steering wheel, blowing puffs of smoke in the air. He's shirtless, his skin raising to goosebumps. He turns the radio on louder, it plays anger, guitars, words screamed and unheard.

”The fuck?” Swan repeats, hand half-way into the bag of chips.

”The other night,” Jiang fiddles with the volume button, his eyes unseeing. There's ash on the dashboard. ”There were headlights following me for like five miles. For a second I thought, I thought I saw, this is so fucked up. When did everything become so fucked up.” Swan's jaw is tight. Skov hasn't returned. Prokopenko still sleeps, dreaming and being dreamed. Jiang stares to some sights unknown. Kavinsky sleeps, six feet underground but still awake. Still dreaming. It's the only explanation for the roar of motor near them, for the cackle of laughter, for the fireworks lighting up the sky- there one second, gone the next. Something slams against the car window.

 

Sunglasses with their mirror lenses, a skinny body in a ragged shirt. Hands too long, too skeletal. If all the boys in Henrietta were animals, then Kavinsky was the jackal, the dragon, the apex predator of the night. He grins at his dogs, his pack. Still together, still lost.

”Dream a little dream of me,” whispers this image of Kavinsky and withdraws, becomes a sleepy Skov who zips up his pants and flops back down on the backseat.

Swan swears. His heart thuk-thuk-thuks. Jiang sleeps and doesn't dream. Dreams are for those who can afford them. The radio plays music louder, crackles static, whispers about dreams and forests and death, death, death and then back to music, to the angry beats of a foreign rap song, to words only Kavinsky would have heard and understood and sympathized with.

 

The dog pack rule the night. A white Mitsubishi drives, silent and unforgivable, unforgotten. The days are for the ravens, the night is for all the dreams of the forgotten Henrietta boys.

 

Long live Kavinsky, the king who was and burned, a dynamite burned from both ends.

 


End file.
